THRILL KILL DILLMAN

Wednesday, May 31st, 2017

In 1959, director Richard Fleischer made the first movie based on the Roaring Twenties era Leopold and Loeb murder case in which two rich, brilliant graduate students, both under nineteen, killed a neighborhood boy for kicks, considered a Thrill Kill, and while Orson Welles, playing the defending lawyer in COMPULSION who controls the last act completely, and the more vulnerable of the two killers, Dean Stockwell, had memorable and icon careers before and after, it’s relatively unknown Bradford Dillman, as the more talkative and confident, that really steals the show: here dancing to a 1920’s swing-band right before hearing about the boy’s body being found. And the picture below, he’s quoting one of his old teachers, who called the kids “Spoiled brats,” while throwing red-herring curves to one of several cops, bewildered on the case, going in circles.